Journal of Contemplative Seeing
Center Quest is an ecumenical hub for the study and practice of Christian spirituality. I am blessed to be a student in their school of spiritual direction. The first class was about contemplative seeing, and one assignment for week four was to take a prayer walk for the purpose of contemplative seeing in creation.
At this point in my life, I am gifted with the opportunity to take a prayer walk/hike every morning up into the Crafton Hills that outline my small southern California town which sits at the base of the San Bernardino mountains. I am a fairly fast walker, and because I am clumsy and have poor balance, most of the time I have to keep my eyes on the trail to make sure I don’t trip. On the appointed day of my assignment, Tuesday, I deliberately slowed my pace in order to see more clearly what new thing God might reveal, keeping my head up. At the beginning of my hike up into the hills, I felt the familiar feeling of striving to accomplish a task and accomplish it well. Being a diligent student, I focused on the assignment to complete, eager to look for what God might show me. Not long into my walk, I remembered how God has been speaking to me about the need to stop striving and to rest. So, I talked to God about this and consciously relaxed, allowing my experience to simply unfold, however that might happen.
My dog, Clare, is my companion on my daily prayer hikes and does not distract from my communion with the Holy Presence. Indeed, on this day, I saw in her a picture of myself. I have been reveling in God’s gifts and the transforming power of the Spirit over the past few weeks, both in my own person and in significant situations in my life. I have seen change even since the opening residency. Indeed, as I have practiced the examen regularly during this course, the predominant emotion has been joy, and the predominant prayer has been gratitude and praise. I have been amazed at the gifts I have received and have felt like I was basking in God’s favor and love. However, that experience has not been without the nagging little voice that hangs in the background saying, “It won’t last. Just wait, something bad is going to happen.” Through the practices we have been reading about, I am learning not to engage with these thoughts, but they are persistent in trying to hijack my joy. I often bring to mind the image from Martin Laird(1) of the mountain and the weather and remind myself that I am not the weather. The weather comes and goes, and I can simply observe it without getting it confused with reality. On this contemplative seeing hike, Clare gave me a picture of this reality of resting in Presence with joy even in situations that might produce fear, stress, anger, or pain.
Clare is young and still in training but has made enormous progress over the past couple of months which is why I can take her on these hikes without sacrificing solitude and presence. The one thing that still can be a problem is if we meet a large dog. She is afraid of large dogs and is usually very loud in her verbal protest of their presence. Normally, we don’t meet many dogs on the trail, but that day as we were walking along, I saw two hikers approaching from the other direction with a very large German Shepherd. Internally, I groaned assuming that Clare would go crazy. I turned to the side of the trail in good Covid protocol to allow the others to pass. I stood protectively over her with my walking stick between her and the trail and gave gentle verbal commands. To my amazement, she never made a sound, nor did she make a move toward the dog. I did observe a slight trembling of her body revealing her fear, but she made no attempt to protest or to protect herself. She waited for my command to proceed down the trail. Immediately, I thought of myself and how it is possible for me to experience the protection of Divine Presence even when I feel threatened or under assault. I can be still and rest even as I watch “danger” pass before my eyes. Then I realized that even in the past couple of weeks, I had been doing just that. My primary consciousness and dominant emotions recently have been joy and gratitude. I have been filled with gratitude for the Presence and movement of God in my life, but at the same time, there have been very stressful things that have happened. Instead of those negative things taking center stage, they have been exactly what they are, just weather on the mountain. I saw that more clearly today as I watched Clare.
As I turned around to descend back toward home, I thought my contemplative seeing was over. I picked up my pace, focused on getting back home to begin the tasks of the day. To my surprise, God was not finished showing me things. It is my regular practice when I am up in the hills to pray over my town, a place where I have seen extreme nationalism, fundamentalist Christianity, and racism (yes, even in California). I always pray for God to break the power of these evils and transform the town into a place of love and hospitality for all people. Today, however, instead of my prayers which always include some judgment, the thought came to me as I looked over the town, “Lord, how do you see this town? Help me to see this place through your eyes.” I didn’t get a definitive answer, but I did remember the picture of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, weeping, not raging or castigating. Maybe this will be a new prayer, a new way of transformation in my seeing. Just a few minutes after these thoughts, I stopped briefly to let Clare have a sniff in the holes on the side of the trail. As I did so, I looked up in the direction of the mountains and was amazed to see that the fields that had been ground zero for the last fire just a few months ago had turned from gray/brown to green. The fields were coming alive again with new growth after being ravaged. What a picture of death and resurrection. A picture of the cruciform life. A picture of my life. Assignment complete. Thanks be to God!
The focus of the final week of this contemplative seeing class was on seeing contemplatively in nature. This is my “happy place,” but even with that, I have found that I am still at the beginning. I need to slow down, to look more deeply, to linger in my watching. I am seeking to return to the child who sees wonder in the smallest flower. When I took my contemplative walk on the assigned day, my focus was upward, as usual, to the sky, the mountains, the birds flying high, and to the city down below. It is easy for me to imagine the grandeur of God, the majesty and beauty of Creator up in those hills, and I expected to see it. But my eyes were still on the “big” things, the expanse. On Friday of that final week of class, something entirely different and unexpected happened.
My first prayers of the morning were a little distracted, and that distraction continued as I began my walk. I found myself thinking of the problems of my children, wishing that other people who I love could taste what I am partaking of, could see beyond the ever-present stresses of their lives, but I also realized that God brings us each along at the right pace. God is at work in each of the ones that I love and will not stop wooing them to the center, just as he has been doing with me all my life. As I sought to release these thoughts, I prayed for God to show me what he wanted me to see on this day, this hike. I didn’t have to wait long.
My daily walk entails a series of ascents and descents. I first climb out of my neighborhood and then have to descend to the trail that eventually leads me up again to the heights. As I began the descent to the canyon trail that would take me to the hill path, I saw up ahead around a bend, a woman struggling to push a stroller up a very steep part of the trail. Surprised, at first I thought that it was a young woman with a child, and I called out, “Do you need help?” There was no response, and as I took a few more steps, I could see that this was actually an older homeless woman, stuck on the climb, unable to push her stroller stuffed with all her earthly possessions. I called out again, “I’ll help you,” and hurried down to meet her. She greeted me with a warm, toothless smile, and I said, “I won’t get too close,” thinking about Covid, and grabbed the front part of the stroller. Together we pulled and pushed that stroller up to a more level part of the path. “Can you get it the rest of the way?” I asked. She replied, “Oh, yes, thank you.” My little dog nuzzled her hand, and I blessed her and turned to go on my way. As I did, I heard her whisper, “My boyfriend is coming.” There was no one else on the trail. I wondered if she suffered from schizophrenia and was only imagining a companion. I don’t have the ability to put into adequate words the knowledge that came over me as I held that encounter in my mind.
Within a matter of seconds of leaving her on the trail, a profound awareness cascaded over me, accompanied by a tingling sensation of the nervous system, that I had been in the presence of the Most Vulnerable God. I was stunned and wish I had language to express the intensity of that knowing. All week long, I had been looking for the God of power and brilliance, God Almighty, and today I saw the God of suffering vulnerability. I saw the Divine, toothless and struggling with a heavy burden, yet smiling through eyes that were bright with light. It was breath-taking in its wonder, and I wanted to run back and gaze upon that woman. Of course, that would have been weird and probably have frightened her, but the desire was strong. I wanted to sit at her feet and marvel. The moment seemed to hover in space, like I had glimpsed a porthole into another dimension. Maybe this is how Mother Teresa felt in the slums of Calcutta.
Annie Dillard says that, “The secret of seeing is…the pearl of great price…[and] although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought…although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.” I was given that gift on that Friday morning. Catching a glimpse of God does not satiate me but only increases my desire. The hunger is palpable. Yet, I know that this gift will not come as a result of my striving, my performance in any way, my own righteousness. Dillard again reminds me that “I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam…The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind…[I can] hone and spread [my] spirit till [I] become [myself] a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff (italics mine).”(2) How I want this gift of seeing! Oh, Lord, come to my assistance; oh, Lord, make haste to help me.
1 Laird, Martin. Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. Oxford University Press, 2006.
2 Dillard, Annie. “Seeing.” Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Harper Perennial, 1974.
